Workers Suffer Injuries, Illnesses Due to Punishing Processing Line Speeds

A coalition of civil rights groups filed a formal petition today urging the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to better protect workers in poultry and meatpacking plants where federal policies allow workers to operate in hazardous conditions that often leave them with disabling injuries, illnesses and pain.

The groups petitioned OSHA to issue new work speed standards to better protect these workers responsible for making the United States the largest producer of poultry and beef in the world. OSHA has general health and safety rules for workplaces, but these rules do not regulate processing line speeds that often operate at a punishing pace.

The only federal agency regulating line speed is the USDA, which is solely focused on food safety and maximizing production for the industries. Though there is ample evidence that work speed is a primary contributor to injuries, the USDA has proposed increasing poultry processing line speeds from a maximum of 140 birds per minute to 175. The groups’ petition also calls on the USDA to reconsider its proposed rule change.

“Meatpacking and poultry processing line jobs are among the most notoriously dangerous jobs in the United States,” the group’s petition states. It notes that “OSHA’s current failure to regulate poultry and meat processing plant work speed puts plant workers at significant risk of permanently disabling cumulative trauma disorders,” such as carpal tunnel syndrome, which are caused by the extraordinary number of repetitive motions these workers perform.

The coalition includes the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, Coalition of Poultry Workers, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Farmworker Advocacy Network, Heartland Workers Center, Interfaith Worker Justice, Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, North Carolina Justice Center, Northwest Arkansas Worker Justice Center, Refugee Women’s Network, Student Action with Farmworkers and Western North Carolina Workers’ Center.

According to the petition, current OSHA standards don’t address the work speed injuries that are most common in poultry and meatpacking plants. It also describes how these workers endure significant injuries and illnesses as they are forced to keep up with the punishing speed of processing lines – even having to urinate and defecate on themselves rather than invite the wrath of the supervisor by leaving the line.

Meat and poultry workers often make 20,000 cuts a day to the meat and poultry on the line, work speeds which lead to debilitating repetitive motion injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Others endure knife cuts and respiratory illnesses.

Many of these workers are fearful of losing their jobs if they report injuries or ask for safer working conditions. This silence enables companies to hide true injury rates that are far higher than what is publicly reported.

The groups urge OSHA to implement the following changes to protect workers:

Establish a standard that limits work speeds.

Create standards that address the specific injuries caused by keeping up with the line speeds.

Ensure that existing safety guidelines are enforceable.

The groups also ask USDA to engage in thorough interagency consultation about worker safety before implementing its proposed poultry rule changes that would increase work speeds in poultry processing.

A first-hand account of the damage caused by the lack of adequate health and safety standards for workers in these plants can be viewed here http://sp.lc/pltry-1

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org

Facts and Resources About Meatpacking and Poultry Processing

Researchers with the Wake Forest School of Medicine studying the health of poultry processing workers in North Carolina since 2004 found that poultry workers were two-and-a-half times more likely to have carpal tunnel than non-poultry workers. It also found that 60 percent of poultry workers had medical indicators of carpal tunnel syndrome.

A 2013 evaluation of one poultry plant in South Carolina by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found that 42 percent of workers had indicators of carpal tunnel syndrome.

The Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest surveyed 455 Nebraska meatpacking workers for its 2009 report The Speed Kills You. It included these findings:

Sixty-two percent of workers indicated they had been injured in the past year.

Seventy-three percent of workers said the processing line speed had increased in the past year. Ninety-four percent said that the number of staff had decreased or stayed the same during that time.

Less than half of workers (44 percent) remember receiving information about workers’ compensation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice interviewed more than 300 Alabama poultry workers for its 2013 report Unsafe at These Speeds. It included these findings:

Almost three-quarters of workers had suffered a significant work-related illness or injury.

Seventy-eight percent of workers said that an increase in line speed makes them feel less safe, makes their work more painful and causes more injuries.

Eighty-six percent of wing cutters and 80 percent of deboners reported hand and wrist pain such as swelling, numbness or an inability to close their hands – symptoms of long-term repetitive motion injuries.

The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer interviewed more than 200 poultry workers across the Southeast for its 2008 series “The Cruelest Cuts.” It found evidence that serious worker injuries went unreported and requests for medical care were dismissed at a major poultry producer.